Ethan explained to me that each time a user clicks on a website, a cookie is created by that website and temporary copies of the web pages are saved in the computer’s cache file. The computer also stores a browser history, so that by glancing at the right files, I could tell exactly where that computer had been on the World Wide Web.

I had to wait five more nights, until Ree was asleep and Jason was at work. Ethan had showed me how I could click on the pull-down menu of the Internet search bar, and it would show me the websites most recently visited by the computer. I selected the search bar, got the pull-down menu, and saw three options, www.drudgereport.com, www.usatoday.com, and www.nytimes.com.

Right away, this struck me as not enough options, because when Ethan had done it in the computer lab, we’d easily gotten twelve to fifteen sites. So I booted up Internet Explorer, and tried its browser history, which gave me the exact same results.

I was stumped.

I monitored the browser history for a bit after that. Every few days, random times, when I thought I could quickly call it up without Jason noticing. Always I found the same three sites, which didn’t make any sense to me. Jason spent hours at a time hunched over the computer. No way he was simply reading the news.

Three weeks later, inspiration hit. I constructed a civics question to research for my social studies class regarding the five freedoms guaranteed under the First Amendment. Then I merrily Google-searched away. I found history sites, I found government sites, Wikipedia, all sorts of good stuff. I hit them all, and by the time I was done that evening, the pull-down menu showed a nice robust list of recently visited websites.

I went to school the next day and gave my class an impromptu lecture on freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom to peacefully assemble, and freedom to petition.

Then I raced home, barely able to contain myself until Ree went to bed and I could check the browser history of Internet Explorer once more.

You know what I found? Three websites: Drudge Report, USA Today, New York Times. Every site I had visited just twenty-four hours before was gone. Wiped out.

Somehow, some way, my husband was covering his online tracks.

The following day, I hit Ethan with my question the second he walked into the computer lab.

“I was talking to another teacher after school yesterday, and she implied that checking the computer’s browser history isn’t enough. That there are ways of tampering with the browser history, or something like that?”

I shrugged helplessly and Ethan immediately sat down at the nearest computer and fired it to life.